Magnus Carlsen was brilliant during day 1 and day 2 of the World Rapid chess championship in Astana. However, his third day games were in total contrast to the general performance so far. He started with a logical win against Ismagambetov, but scored back-to-back loses against Ivanchuk and Grischuk. A draw against Radjabov left him without much practical chances for the title, while in the last game he could have even lost the silver, had Veselin Topalov seen a forced mate in the endgame.

Topalov himself had yet another strange mixture of irregular performances. He made normal draws with Ismagambetov and Gelfand, and exploded in the right moment with a beautiful sacrifice in a key game against Grischuk. However, right when he was touching the silver, he missed the already mentioned mate in the game with Carlsen.

Grischuk and Mamedyarov had good chances for the bronze medals during the third day, up to the last moment they were possible top finishers. In the final table Grischuk has equal points with Topalov and will share the prize money with him, while Mamedyarov is half a point behind.

The classical chess finalist Boris Gelfand showed solid chess to take the 6th position, half a point ahead of Ivanchuk, Svidler and Radjabov. Alexaei Dreev is clear 10th, followed by Morozevich, Bologan, Kurnosov, Kazhgaleyev, Tkachiev, and Ismagambetov.

Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin is born January 12, 1990 in Simferopol. He is a chess prodigy and holds the record for both the youngest International Master (eleven years and eleven months old) and youngest grandmaster in history (at the age of twelve years and seven months). He is currently 6th in the world with ELO rating 2779, while his highest mark is 2788 in July 2011.
During the Chess World Cup 2007, which served as a qualification tournament for the World Chess Championship 2010, Karjakin reached the semi-finals, in which he lost to Alexei Shirov. On the January 2008 FIDE rating list, published just before Karjakin’s eighteenth birthday, he passed the 2700 mark for the first time, with a new rating of 2732 and a world rank of 13.